Micro-politics in Initial Teacher Education: Luke's story

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Micro-politics in InitialTeacher Education: Luke'sstoryHeather Hodkinson & Phil HodkinsonPublished online: 03 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Heather Hodkinson & Phil Hodkinson (1997) Micro-politicsin Initial Teacher Education: Luke's story, Journal of Education for Teaching:International research and pedagogy, 23:2, 119-130

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Journal of Education for Teaching, Vol. 23, No. 2, 1997

Micro-politics in Initial TeacherEducation: Luke’ s story

HEATHER HODKINSON & PHIL HODKINSONCrewe School of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University, Crewe Green Road,

Crewe, Cheshire CW1 5DU, England

ABSTRACT A case study of one secondary Initial Teacher Education student’ s ® rst school

experience on one of the newly developed university± school partnership schemes in

England is presented. The ® nal report on this experience was controversial and resulted

in very high feelings. The paper analyses three possible explanations for this ® nding and

concludes that it can be understood as an example of micro-politics. The paper points to

the virtual absence of a micro-political dimension in current teacher education literature

and argues that such a dimension is much needed in research on the topic in teacher

education. Student teachers themselves should be made aware of the micro-political

dimensions of the schools in which they learn to teach.

INTRODUCTION

Luke1

proved to be a very con® dent and enthusiastic (student). His subject

know ledge in physical education was good. He had a pleasing rapport with the

pupils (but needs to be aware of becoming too familiar with some of them). He

had good classroom organisation supported by thorough lesson plans and

evaluations. He had a commanding presence whilst teaching aided by excellent

voice projection. (Beverley, subject mentor)

Luke needs to appreciate fully the importance of commitment in terms of

attendance. Every attempt e.g. the use of public transport, if the college coach is

missed, needs to be made to ensure that he is in the work place. This is an

important aspect of the practice, and, indeed, of professionalism. (Elaine,

professional mentor)

I do feel the comments above are unfair and I understand that the department

feels this way too. I reiterate that Luke has excellent potential and that he has

demonstrated a professional and committed approach. (Keith, university mentor)

These extracts are from one school experience (teaching practice) report, which Luke, the

student teacher concerned, refused to sign. Examining this report suggests two questions.

Why is there a sharp contrast in tone between the middle comment and the other two, and

why did several people feel that the middle comment was a serious injustice? In exploring

0260-7476/97/020119-11 $7.00 Ó 1997 Journal of Education for Teaching

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120 H. Hodkinson & P. Hodkinson

the answers to these questions, we suggest that the discourse about initial teacher

education (ITE) should include a micro-political dimension.

CONTEXT FOR THE STUDY

ITE in England and Wales has become subject to increasingly tight Government controls

(DES, 1989; DfE, 1992). Schools must now be partners in ITE, receiving part of the

funding and taking a more active role in determining the nature of the programme and in

providing it. A higher propor tion of an ITE student’ s time must be spent in school than

was the case in the recent past. ITE is managed nationally by a new, semi-independent

organisation, the Teacher Training Agency (TTA). The emphasis within the of® cial

discourse is on the improvement of teaching performance in the classroom, and that

performance is to be monitored through external inspections. In contrast, many university

ITE tutors, following Schon (1983, 1987) and others, see re¯ ective practice as a defence

against technicism and the imposition of such externally de® ned practices. This defence

has developed in response to widespread attacks, including some from within the English

ITE community itself (Hargreaves, 1990).

Both the of® cial discourse of ef® cient and high quality training and its academic

counterpart of professionalism through re¯ ective practice share a focus on teacher

performance, especially in the classroom. The emphasis is on the ways in which properly

structured programmes (TTA) and/or relationships between students and mentors (teacher

educators) can produce better technicians (TTA) or professionals (teacher educators).

What is largely missing from both is discussion of the ways in which wider contexts and

relationships affect the workings of partnership schemes.

The Crewe School of Education embarked on the new partnership schemes with

cautious optim ism. However, conscious of the novelty of some of the arrangements and

planning, a decision was taken to conduct a semi-independent investigation of the ® rst two

years of the two secondary undergraduate schemes with particular reference to the

experiences of the students in school. One of the schemes is a four year course designed

for students with no signi® cant previous higher education experience. The other is a

shortened, two year programme, sanctioned by the TTA for students having the equivalent

of two years previous higher education experience in speci® c shortage subjects. On both

courses TTA regulations decree that 50% of the time must be spend on studying a relevant

academic subject. The other 50% is unequally divided between extensive school based

experience and university based educational studies. During school experience the students

are supported by three mentors: the university mentor, a lecturer, is responsible for liaison

between the school and the university; the professional mentor, often a deputy headteacher

in the school, takes overall responsibility for the student’ s progress; the subject mentor,

often (but not in Luke’ s case) a head of department, is responsible for the day to day

progress of the student.

Luke was a ® rst year physical education (PE) student on the four year course. This

involved a period of school experience in the second term, consisting of an introductory

week followed, after three weeks back in the university, by a four week block. In

subsequent years blocks of school experience, in different schools, were longer, but in this

paper we focus on Luke’ s ® rst school experience.

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Micro-poli tics in Initial Teacher Education 121

METHOD

The aim of the investigation was to add to understandings gained through informal

feedback and discussions, mentor meetings and workshops, and student course evaluation.

We, as research fellow and project director, were employed by the School of Education

which operated the courses under investigation, but were not involved in their planning or

conduct.

From the outset we were interested in the complexity of the new partnership

arrangements, involving the different mentors, the university and the schools. In order to

examine this complexity we adopted a form of stakeholder research which had proved

effective in the different area of Youth Training (Hodkinson et al., 1996). We worked

within a broadly interpretative paradigm (Smith, 1989), with a prime concern being to

understand the meanings different student teachers gave to the operation of the scheme. We

took a small sample of 18 students originally placed in 5 schools. The sample was chosen

to give a range of students, subjects and types of school. We interviewed each student and

each mentor working with them, before the start of and again after each period of school

experience. In the second year, not reported here, we followed half the students into their

new schools, and stayed with two of the schools as they received new student teachers. In

all about 140 interviews were conducted relating to 12 schools and 23 students.

The interviews were semi-structured and open ended. There was a planned focus

on issues to do with the operation of the scheme and with student learning and progression,

balanced by a wish to explore issues raised by the stakeholders themselves. We wanted

to know what they found to be salient aspects of their school experience. After the ® rst

round of interviews we followed up and deepened our understanding of key themes in the

stories of particular students, whilst still being open to new issues arising. Relations

between interviewees and other stakeholders was an issue that frequently arose in

discussion. Interviews were tape recorded, listened to several times and selectively

transcribed.

MAKING SENSE OF THE FINDINGS

Epistemologically, following Smith (1993) , we began the research with the assumption that

there is no one single correct interpretation of the data which we collected, but that some

interpretations are more convincing than others. From this perspective, it is a truism that

a researcher can only interpret data from an existing, but hopefully developing, standpoint.

It is important to conduc t that interpretation in as open-minded a way as possible, by

placing any implicit or explicit prejudgments àt risk’ . That is, using the data and further

reading to challenge, develop and/or change those prejudgments, as they merge with the

data (Gadamer, 1979). One way of doing that is to explore different possible interpretations

of the same events, and that is what we did in this case. As will be seen, the evidence

collected persuaded us to discard two possible explanations as at best incomplete, leaving

micro-politics as the most likely of the three. However, we are not claiming that the three

explanations described below exhaust the possibilities. For example, drawing on more or

our data, we are currently exploring the use of Bourdieu ’ s notions of habitus, capital and

® eld (Bourdieu, 1979).

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The way in which this study was conceptualised and in which the data was collected,

pointed towards an interpretation focussed upon the inter-relationships between the people

concerned. Consequently, micro-politics was always a likely avenue to explore, although

it was not in the forefront of our thinking when the study commenced.

We became interested in the incident reported here when we learned about the furore

caused by the school experience report. Because of our research approach we had relevant

interview data from most of the signi® cant players both before and after the incident

occurred. We therefore went through the interviews carefully, trying to unpick the

situation that had arisen. In trying to answer the questions with which this paper opened,

we present three possible levels of explanation.

THE PRESSURES OF BEING A PROFESSIONAL MENTOR

The simplest explanation is that Elaine, the professional mentor, added an inappropriate

comment in haste and under stress. Her comments were certainly at odds with the views

of Luke and the members of the PE department. Within that department, things apparently

went very well. Beverley, the subject mentor, set aside time each week and talked through

lessons, plans, evaluations and problems with Luke. She offered guidance and encouraged

him to express his own ideas. Luke took the initiative in helping with lessons and

responded well to constructive criticism. He appreciated the way criticism was handled in

the department. He found much to emulate and felt that he had learned a lot. The

department felt that he took his subject and his teaching seriously, prepared and evaluated

lessons thoroughly and was willing to take part in extra curricular activities. They regarded

him as a very successful student.

We know from the university mentor that Elaine only added her comment when he

arrived to collect Luke’ s report. We also know that Beverley was unhappy that there had

been no discussion with Elaine before the report was ® nalised. We heard from another

teacher in the school that Elaine was under a lot of stress due to threatened redundancies

at the time. ` ¼ a lot of staff though t we should be losing a deputy, ¼ not losing

classroom teachers’ .

However this explanation assumes that Elaine’ s comment was inappropria te. To

investigate this further and to see why Elaine believed that the comment had to be made,

we need to examine a series of critical incidents in Luke’ s school experience.

CRITICAL INCIDENTS OF UNPROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

Despite Luke’ s good performance in PE teaching, there was a series of incidents in his

school experience which presented a less satisfactory picture to the professional mentor.

Elaine had timetabled the ® rst week, as the university had requested, to be a `whole

school’ experience for the student teachers. The students were happy with this, but the

head of PE was not. He told us he felt he was not seeing enough of his student. Luke

describes what happened:

¼ he ended up going and saying [to Elaine], `Luke wants to come down here

all the time’ . ¼

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So she came back to us and was a bit funny with me, thinking that I was saying

she wasn’ t doing her job properly, which I wasn’ t. I mean it was only he said,

`Would you like to spend more time down in physical education?’ and I thought ,

`That’ s what I’ m here for’ , so, `Yes’ .

This was Luke’ s ® rst `clash’ with Elaine, and as he later said, Ìt just sort of escalated from

there’ .

A second incident resulted from Luke’ s membership of the university soccer team. He

asked the university mentor, Keith, if he could have time off school to play in a cup match.

Keith says he refused, but follow ing pressure from his team captain, Luke asked the

school, only to discover that they knew nothing about it.

You see that upset me because he [Keith] didn’ t actually ask the school. I [now]

know he didn’ t have to but, to me, it would have affected them rather more than

it affects him. So I asked the school and they were all 100% behind me, said,

Òh yes, we’ d love to see you progressing’ , and everything.

Having allowed Luke to play his match, Elaine mentioned it to Keith on his ® rst visit.

Keith was annoyed that Luke had gone behind his back. Elaine was not happy at having

been used in this way. Keith expressed the opinion, developed over several years as an

education tutor, that PE students quite often had something of a `cavalier’ attitude. Luke’ s

behaviour seemed to be ® tting this stereotype and Keith and Elaine supported one another

in this view of Luke.

However, Elaine’ s main criticism of Luke, when she spoke to us, concentrated on two

later episodes. In the ® rst, a part time dinner supervisor had complained to Elaine that

Luke and a maths student had barged between her and a pupil she was reprimanding. The

students were not even aware of the incident. However they accepted that it must have

happened and apologised to everyone concerned. After the end of the school experience

Elaine said,

They certainly needed help in terms of how they conduc ted themselves in

school. Again some of them had a very good perception of that and some didn’ t,

in terms of basics like punctuality, attendance, etc., also how they integrated in

the staffroom, and how they addressed members of staff. An illustration of that

is how you treat a dinner supervisor. You don’ t treat them as a lower order

member of staff ¼ So one or two people needed advice on how to relate to

people like that, particularly when complaints are received about their rudeness.

Another incident occurred the day after the hour changed when Luke missed the

university bus which took him the considerable distance to school every day. He

telephoned and apologised and then went in to personally apologise to Elaine the next day.

She was not impressed and told us, ` ¼ a few of them had very poor perceptions about

what professionalism was and so I had to enter into quite pointed discussions about

attendance’ . She felt Luke should have made more effort to get into school, even though

he would have been very late. This incident dominated her comment in Luke’ s ® nal report,

and is the incident about which he was most upset. His view was that others had missed

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days and lied about being ill with impunity, whereas he had been penalised for being

honest about a mistake.

There was a ® nal incident where Luke knew himself to be at fault, and his subject

mentor was also critical. Luke had arranged to observe and later teach a class for his

second subject, but he hardly prepared at all, giving priority to his PE lessons. The

resulting lesson was disastrous. However Luke was the only student to make the required

attempt at his second subject.

Beverley’ s main comments on Luke’ s report re¯ ected his good progress within the

PE department. Elaine, on the other hand, had seen a series of what appeared to be

unprofessional actions from Luke. When she read Beverley’ s report she could well have

felt that this lack of professionalism was not adequately re¯ ected. She therefore added the

comment about the day Luke missed.

This explanation goes some way towards accounting for the contrast between the ® rst

two comments on the report, but it does not explain the strength of the reactions of Luke,

Keith and the whole PE department. Feelings against Elaine’ s comment ran very high.

Female PE teacher: He had a really good practice ¼ we were very, very pleased with

him. And on his `crit’ ¼ we’ d written sort of a lovely one for him because we thought he

deserved it. And then Elaine had written three quarters of a page about him missing this

lesson!

Male PE teacher: The report that he got, I thought it was very hard on him

really ¼ we suggested that he didn’ t sign it because we didn’ t feel it was a fair re¯ ection

of his practice.

Keith (the university mentor): I ¼ said to her, `Well I’ ll have a chat with Luke about

this.’ ¼ The comments from Elaine, they were not fair ¼ I had a chat with Luke over

it ¼ asked him to put his side of the story and I said I would put a qualifying statement.

To explain these reactions, we need to engage with a third level of explanation:

micro-politics.

MICRO-POLITICS

Hoyle (1982) describes micro-politics as including `those strategies by which individuals

and groups in organisational contexts seek to use their resources of power and in¯ uence

to further their interests’ (p. 88). Each of the characters in this story had a different

position in relation to school experience in the partnership scheme, and had different

`resources of power’ and different interests.

Luke spent most of his time in a PE sub-culture where team loyalty was highly

valued. In this context his attempt to get time off for a cup match was a responsible act.

This perception probably resonated with the PE teachers, who would have seen his request

as appropriate. Both they and Luke were conscious that he was a student and that he was

only missing part of the observation week. Elaine initially took the same view, assuming

that Keith, the university mentor, had given permission or had left the decision to her.

However, as a deputy head she would have experience of pupils playing one teacher off

against another. When Keith told her he had forbidden Luke to play, she felt she had been

used to underline his authori ty. Also, she and Keith represented their respective institutions

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in the new partnership scheme. Each would be anxious to support the other and to be seen

as doing a good job, in order to keep the partnership running smoothly. Neither was

particularly sympathetic to a PE perspective. We have already seen that Keith had some

unfavourable views about PE students. He said to us,

We can have all sorts of problems ¼ with physical education students trying to

play matches during school experience ¼

Their interest is very much PE, really and that’ s the end of life as far as they’ re

concerned ¼

In the past a lot of PE students had conveniently forgotten that they had second

subjects.

Luke misread the power relations around this incident. He probably failed to appreciate

the different value positions of Elaine and Keith, and certainly over-estimated his own

resources to in¯ uence events. He played in the match, but paid a political price for

doing so.

Furthermore, there was evidently a lack of communication and of mutual respect

between the PE department and Elaine. The science student teacher observed that

`[Elaine] didn’ t get on at all with the physical education department. They didn’ t

like her at all actually’ . Elaine described the PE department as inexperienced in dealing

with students. On the other hand Jack, the head of PE, felt he was being kept in

the dark over the organisation of the experience, and was unhappy about his isolation

in the ® rst week. Elaine saw far more of the science and maths students, who were based

near her room and, as a geography teacher herself, she was probably more comfortable

working with students in classroom or laboratory rather than gym or playing ® eld. It was

natural for her to ask a science colleague, who had worked successfully with previous

students, to give Luke and the others a day of observation and advice in the ® rst week.

However, as one of the other students was a scientist, Jack saw this as unfair on his

department. Beverley, the PE subject mentor, believed that she had been unfairly treated

by the school. Unlike the mentors in other subjects, she was not relieved of covering for

absent teachers, and lost time that she had intended to devote to Luke. Such tensions

between marginal PE departments and senior staff, who are often drawn from higher

status, classroom based subjects (Goodson, 1984), are not uncommon (Sparkes et al.,

1990).

As Luke’ s experience continued, these opposit ional positions were reinforced. For

Elaine, the incidents described above built a continual picture of inadequate professional-

ism. She was uninvolved with Luke’ s successful PE teaching. Elaine had the status and

resources to impose her statement upon the report that had been originally written by

Beverley. For the PE group, Luke was making excellent progress and so they were

annoyed that their agreed report comments seemed to have been undermined. They lacked

the resources to tackle Elaine or to get her comment changed. Instead, they encouraged

Luke to exercise his limited power by refusing to sign the report. Luke had a growing

sense of injustice. He felt his actions were misunderstood by Elaine, who always appeared

to place the worst possible interpretation on them, for example by assuming that he had

a lack of respect for non-teaching staff at the school. He resented the fact that Elaine did

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not, on their reports, criticise the mathematics and science students for a lack of

professionalism even though one had been involved in the dinner supervisor incident and

the others had been absent more than he was. He felt he had been professional in admitting

he had missed the bus. On a low student grant, it probably never occurred to him to try

to get to the school by expensive and time consuming public transport. He also felt that

support from his faculty mentor had been limited. Keith had seemed to him to be

concerned chie¯ y with not upsetting the school, and he would not understand Keith’ s

concerns about `cavalier’ PE students.

This background of increasingly entrenched positions produced the reactions to the

® nal report. Luke already believed that he had been unfairly victimised in comparison to

other students. He was reinforced in this view by the PE staff, who closed ranks to support

a guest member of the department against a common foe. This was made worse by the lack

of a meeting between Elaine and Beverley (and possibly Luke) to attempt a coherent,

balanced report. It is possible that even if such a meeting had taken place the differences

would have remained but, for the PE staff, its absence added to the feeling that their views

were unimportant, and reminded them that Elaine exercised greater power than they did.

At this point Keith, the university mentor, became involved once more. Having been

earlier concerned to maintain course discipline, he now found a changed situation. Faced

with the anger of the PE staff, Luke’ s success in PE teaching and his refusal to sign the

report, Keith supported the student without risking a confrontation with Elaine, which

might have muddied relations between the university and the school. He did this by adding

a comment to the report which contradicted Elaine’ s, and inviting Luke to add his own

views. This was politically astute, for he exercised power over the sphere where he had

control and avoided confronting Elaine on her own territory.

As researchers, we were also micro-political players in Luke’ s story. Although not

involved in the teaching, mentoring or organisation of the partnership scheme we are

investigating, we are located in the same department as those who are. Though we have

tried to represent Elaine’ s position fairly, she was not as forthcoming talking to us as were

the other players. Her attitude appeared inconsistent: sometimes friendly and helpful,

sometimes brusque and off putting. We can, therefore, empathise with Keith and Luke

more easily than with her.

Our own political involvement has in¯ uenced the research in another way. We have

circulated some of our ® ndings to partner schools and to our departmental colleagues

through a series of brie® ng papers, but we cannot use Luke’ s story in this way. Whilst this

is partly an ethical decision to protect the anonym ity of the players, it is also that we

cannot risk upsetting relationships between the university and the school involved through

such publication.

MICRO-POLITICS AND THE LANDSCAPES OF ITE

From this story, we can draw some pointers towards a fuller understanding of school based

ITE. Partnership schemes involve many people, as students, pupils, mentors and teachers.

The inter-relationships between them are important for the success of the scheme and for

the progress of students. These people have different perceptions of each other, of schools,

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of education and of individual incidents and actions within an experience. Such percep-

tions are located within different sub-cultural and micro-political groupings, related to

different forms of in¯ uence and access to power. The interactions between these people

can take many forms, including agreement, acquiescence and negotia tion. But they can

sometimes result in struggle and con¯ ict. In such con¯ icts there may be no-one to blame,

for each person’ s actions may appear reasonable, seen from their particular standpoint. In

such con¯ icts, as Sparkes & Mackay (1996) show, students have little access to power, and

often adopt an approach of what Lacey (1977) called `strategic compliance’ .

Apart from the Sparkes and Mackay paper, there is a general absence of a micro-

politica l dimension in the literature on ITE. This is odd, for the dimension is well known

in studies of schools. Twenty ® ve years ago, Keddie (1971) identi® ed two different

contexts for the teacher’ s work: the `teacher context’ of the classroom and the èducation-

ist context’ of the wider discourse, for example in the staff room and when talking to

parents, governors and advisers. For her, these two contexts were unconnected and her

main ® nding was that practice in the teacher context often contradicted the rhetoric of the

educationist context. One way of reading the current ITE literature is that there remains

an implicit assumption that these two contexts are separate, and that the focus of ITE is

on the teacher contextÐ the classroom. Other factors only become relevant to the extent

that they directly impede or enable work and learning in that context (Zeichner et al.,

1987).

On the other hand, micro-politics in schools is normally assumed to occupy the

èducationist context’ . Thus Hargreaves (1981) examined the use of rhetoric as a means

of building and defending hegemonic positions in staffroom discourse and Sparkes (1987)

argues that PE teachers use strategic rhetoric to ® ght resource battles in schools. By

analysing a series of ethnographic case studies of secondary schools, Ball (1978) proclaims

`schools, in common with virtually all other social organizations, to be arenas of struggle;

to be riven with actual or potential con¯ ict between members: to be poorly coordinated:

to be ideologically diverse’ (p. 19).

While Keddie separated the teacher from the educationist contexts, Ball simply

concentrates most of his attention on the latter. However, recent studies have suggested

that the two contexts are more closely inter-linked. For example, Clandinin & Connelly

(1996) talk of language landscapes. They suggest that schools are sites of three types of

story. Sacred stories dominate what Keddie called the educationist contextÐ sacred

because they cannot be successfully challenged, but are accepted as rhetorical truths.

Private stories ® t with the teacher context. They are seldom shared with others and, if they

are, usually in private or semi-private situations. These two are linked by cover stories,

which are used by teachers to protect their private stories whilst engaging in the sacred

stories of the school. Clandinin and Connelly go on to show that school practices are

related to the language landscape and that as one factor changes so do others. For example,

changes to the sacred story can cause private stories to change as teachers see themselves

differently and are seen differently by others.

This brief analysis suggests that, whether we use the language of micro-politics or of

language landscapes, this dimension of student teachers’ experiences is a vital part of any

ITE scheme. Arguably it always was but, in England and Wales, formalised partnerships

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have further complicated the politics, as the inter-face between school and university gains

more prominence. In this paper we have concentrated on what happened in a school, but

in at least one other story that is emerging from our data, micro-political relationships

within the university have been signi® cant.

We conclude with three observations about the need to take this micro-political

dimension of ITE seriously. First, more attention needs to be directed towards understand-

ing the different ways in which micro-politics works in ITE, within schools and universi-

ties and between them. This may include challenging assumptions that re¯ ective practice

alone can make students more autonom ous (Archer & Hogbin, 1995). Given the power

differentials, strategic compliance may be a more realistic goal for many students. This

need to discover more about micro-politics in ITE presents us with a dif® cult research

agenda because, as Hoyle (1986) himself acknowledged, micro-politics is often invisible.

It only surfaced in this study where con¯ ict was apparent. Where things run more

smoothly, including where students choose not to `rock the boat’ , it is very dif® cult to

identify.

Second, we should alter the balance of ITE schemes a little, so that being a teacher

in the educationist context is explicitly addressed. This is important, for McNally et al.

(1994) argue that `during this period of initiation (into being a teacher), most of our

sample’ s learning could be described as occupational socialisation. Their preoccupations

were affective rather than cognitive and they learned the mores of their hosts. Their

primary need was `belonging’ (p. 227). Like Haggar (1995) and Brown (1994) they argue

that `belonging’ gets in the way of learning how to teach, even though it is `socially

necessary’ . We would add that there is a need to help student teachers understand more

clearly what they are trying to belong to. Luke succeeded in belonging to the PE

department, but found problems in relation to his professional mentor. Perhaps his course

should have introduced him to the marginalised position of PE departments in many

secondary schools.

Third, there is a need to accept and deal with the inevitability of con¯ ict in

schools, universities and ITE schemes, and to distance ourselves from the rhetoric

that con¯ icts are always dysfunctional demonstrations of system failure. Luke claims

to have learned a lot from his ® rst experience. The following year he completed a

highly successful experience in a different school. He did prepare thoroughly for his

second subject and claimed that he was more conscious of what he needed to do to get on

in the school. We would say that he was more micro-politically aware. Despite his

continuing sense of injustice, the tensions described above may actually have done Luke

a favour.

NOTE

1. All names and some factual details in Luke’ s story have been changed to preserve anonymity.

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Documents

Micro-politics in Initial Teacher Education: Luke's story